Aug. 14, 2026, 6:57 p.m. ET
“The Brady Bunch” star Susan Olsen is sharing her complicated feelings about acting.
Known for her role as Cindy Brady on the beloved series, which ran from 1969 to 1974, Olsen, 65, reflected on her career after the show ended in an interview with Remind Magazine, published Aug. 14.
“For reasons I can’t even explain, I continue to do acting or to pursue it,” she said. “I think to please my mother, even when I was like 18.”
When she was accepted into the University of Southern California, Olsen said “I do not know why I didn’t go ahead and join the film school, because I must have known that I had an inkling for that.” Looking back, she said she didn’t realize that being behind the scenes is “really where I belong.”
“It wasn’t until I was 23 that I actually landed an acting job and was driving home with the script and went, ‘Oh my gosh, I hate acting. What am I doing? This is terrible,'” Olsen continued. “Of course I did the role, but I called my teacher, I called my agent and said, ‘I can’t do this.’ It wasn’t my medium.”
After “The Brady Bunch,” the former child star reprised her role as Cindy several times, including on “The Brady Bunch Hour” from 1976 to 1977, in the 1981 TV movie “The Brady Girls Get Married” and in the 1990 spinoff “The Bradys,” which followed Cindy and her siblings as adults.
In the years since, she has worked in radio and pursued a career as a graphic artist, which she still does today.
Olsen has previously opened up about her negative feelings toward playing Cindy, a role she began at just 7 years old. In 2025, she told People, “As a child, I didn’t like Cindy. I used to say I wouldn’t even have her for a friend, because she was a tattletale.”
“She was kind of stupid,” she added of the character, who is the youngest Brady sibling. “That was basically it. I thought she wasn’t bright at all.”
“I really shouldn’t be taking a dump all over this lovable character, but as a child, being stupid wasn’t cute. I didn’t know why that was cute,” she added.
